The Calm Before The Storm
by blueandblack
Summary: Cassie falls in love too much. It's not normal. Pre-Skins, but contains Skins characters. Written for a meme at my LJ in which people can ask for any ship or character provided I'm familiar with it.


Cassie falls in love too much. It's not normal.

She has always known – even the very first time – it's not normal.

* * *

In the year in which she turns nine she's mad about lollipops. Truth be told she's always been in love with them, she just never knew it till now. She's nine and she's in love with lollipops – and those little rectangular sandwiches you get at grown-ups' parties.

But then she overhears: "Simply _blissful_ finger sandwiches, Delia!"

_Finger sandwiches._

From then on Cassie feels like a monster when she eats – them – anything – she imagines she's going to gobble the whole world up and when she's finished, when she's good and finished, there'll only be crumbs – only crumbs with no floor to fall on – nobody to sweep them into a napkin and no napkins left either.

* * *

The next year she writes a poem about it in school – about them – lollipops and finger sandwiches. It's a love song, a broken up ballad of _sticky-sweet, solid, safe – melt in your mouth – it's like they're beckoning – little fingers, bold as brass – I think she's a girl and she's got shiny, shiny glass cheeks, and I'm a monster, I'm a bone-cruncher, fee fi fo fum…_

At the end of year assembly her teacher spends a very long time talking to her parents. She's telling them how brilliant Cassie is, a little T.S. Eliot in the making, how she ought to be encouraged to write, how she tried to get _Lollipops and Finger Sandwiches_ published in the school yearbook, but the advisory board are awfully uptight and awfully narrow-minded, and besides, nobody at this school seems to understand that poetry doesn't need to rhyme – "It's not as though it's all _abab_ in the real world, _honestly._"

Cassie doesn't hear any of it, and it goes in one of her mother's ears and out one of her father's. She decides Miss Lowe was talking to her parents because she was worried – because she knew – she knew it was a love song and she knew it wasn't normal.

Cassie feels ashamed, and very quickly she falls in love again – with Miss Lowe, who suddenly seems as pretty and as normal as she is not.

_I think she's a girl and she's got shiny, shiny glass cheeks…_

Cassie's mad about Miss Lowe. But it's too late. She's moving on.

For the first three months of the next school year she lingers sadly at her old classroom door every time she passes it.

Nobody sees her – it is always closed – she is always too late.

* * *

She's eleven and she loves Japanese cartoons. It's so weird – the boys are almost prettier than the girls sometimes.

* * *

Twelve is all about the boy next door. And this one's understandable; this one might even be something approaching normal.

He's very good-looking after all – and the right age, the right gender, and not a comestible or a moving image – he's an actual live human being and he's just right.

It seems like he spends all summer outside with his shirt off. He mows the lawn, he lies under the sprinkler, he builds a tree-house with his little brother, and he smiles at Cassie once when she's hanging out the washing as slowly as possible.

He might be smiling – he might be squinting – Cassie is squinting – it's sunny – it's hard to tell.

He has longish dark hair that makes ringlets at his neck. His skin is pale and always threatening to burn but never quite – _never quite._

Cassie thinks he's probably Eastern European.

She asks her mother who moved in next door and she says the Thompsons. She says they're only renting. Cassie is sure she is wrong.

But he's gone by the time autumn arrives – _not-a-Thompson_ and his little brother and the mother and father she has never managed to catch sight of.

Dead leaves make a bed on the tree house – the tree-floor, Cassie thinks, that's all it ever was – just a few planks of wood – that's all.

* * *

Thirteen. She meets Michelle.

Michelle's legs are very long and her skirts are very short and Cassie steals her parents' Beatles discs away to her room and calls herself a fan.

_Michelle, ma belle, these are words that go together well._

_My Michelle,_ she thinks.

Sometimes she wants to kiss her so badly it hurts, and it hurts so badly that she tells her once – "Michelle, I want to kiss you," she says.

Michelle smiles. Michelle shrugs. Michelle says she's up for it. Michelle says she's up for anything.

She says it loud enough for other people to hear and she tosses her messy hair back and there's a boy on another bench with lots of friends and he has blue eyes and he won't look away.

Michelle leans in. Cassie shakes her head when it's over.

* * *

She's fourteen the first time she goes to hospital, unless you count the time she had her appendix out. The nurses are mean and fat. She's transferred to the treatment centre after three days, and she spends two hours a week in Dr Stock's office. Dr Stock is mean and thin. Cassie thinks she adores her.

Then Dr Stock stops seeing patients. When Cassie asks why she tells her she needs to spend less time with everybody else's daughter and more time with her own. "She's a wreck, my girl," she says with stern nonchalance, "If I don't sort her out now she'll probably end up in here."

Cassie cries and cries.

It's no good.

* * *

When she's fifteen she's exhausted. Always. All the time.

_Home, hospital, treatment centre, home, hospital, treatment centre._ It's endless.

Cassie doesn't see anyone, doesn't think about anyone. She doesn't fall in love with anyone – or anything.

Oh she'll never forget – _never_ – lollipops to Dr Stock, she'll never, _never_ forget.

But she thinks maybe it's over. She thinks maybe she's done loving things that can't love her back. She thinks maybe she's done dropping her heart at people's feet when they're not looking.

She is wrong, of course. She is so wrong.

And later she will look back on this year with strange fondness. Later she will call it the calm before the storm.


End file.
